


You'll Be In My Heart

by FrenchKey, JayofOlympus



Series: Ladies of Marvel Bingo 2019 [8]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, BAMF Carol Danvers, Carol Danvers is a Good Bro, Fluff and Angst, Forced adoption, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Happy Ending, Harm to Children, Humor, Kidnapping, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Morning Sickness, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Cravings, This is fluffier than the tags make it sound, Threat to children, space roadtrip, we promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24541570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchKey/pseuds/FrenchKey, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayofOlympus/pseuds/JayofOlympus
Summary: Carol finds a floating heap of space junk and her mechanic's heart can't just pass it by. She is not prepared for what she finds inside, or the journey it will take her on.Loki is having a terrible day. Then the Not-Kree shows up and her day gets weird instead.
Relationships: Carol Danvers & Loki
Series: Ladies of Marvel Bingo 2019 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706140
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40
Collections: Ladies of Marvel Bingo 2019





	You'll Be In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is our fill for square M1 - AU: Shifters of the Ladies of Marvel Bingo. Once again, the plot got away from us a little, so there is more to come. The whole shifter thing is introduced in this chapter, but it will become much more important later! 
> 
> Please read the tags and if you've got any questions you can find us both on Tumblr under the same usernames. We promise that it is quite a funny, fluffy fic, but it does have some darker themes running through it so we understand if you choose not to read. 
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name in Disney's Tarzan. Hope you enjoy!

She nearly passed it by, thinking it was just another piece of space junk, long abandoned. It was certainly old, a ship class that would be considered obsolete on all but the farthest edges of the galaxy. In the end, that’s why she looked. Carol might have been a superhero now (at least according to Monica), but she’d never stopped being a pilot. A TI-2187-E was a relic, but it was a relic that had revolutionised space travel in its day. She couldn’t really have been expected to pass up a chance to get up close and personal with that engine.

Moving closer, it became clear that the ship still had power, though the engines had obviously failed. It was no wonder they had, given the state the ship was in. Honestly, she thought it was a miracle anyone had gotten it off-planet in the first place. The ship was falling apart, shoddy patch jobs giving way under the pressure of whatever journey it had taken. And whoever had risked such a flight had either fallen victim to pirates, or the consequences of the ship’s disrepair.

Carol flew closer, curious enough now to really want to investigate. She hadn’t seen any escape pods on her flight so far, nor any signs of pirates in the area, but there would be no way to know how long the craft had been drifting until she boarded. It wasn’t warm inside, but the airlock had held up and oxygen was still circulating, which was a miracle in itself, though she wasn’t sure how much longer that would be true for. She stepped carefully, not entirely sure she wasn’t going to end up putting a foot through a floor panel. Everything was rust spotted. It reminded her of the time she’d got the chicken pox when she was six. She didn’t technically feel cold anymore, but something still caused her to shiver. 

The passageways were cramped and laid out in the most illogical way she’d ever seen. She’d met Zargrens and tried to navigate their architecture and this was somehow still worse. She found the engine room before she found the galley or any of the berths. If she ever found the being that had designed this ship, she was going to strangle them, she decided.

As she’d suspected, the engines had simply given up. There was little to be done for them; everything was rusted and falling to pieces, and something gross that looked nothing like oil had clogged up a piston so badly she was sure it would be pointless trying to clear it.

Something shifted in the air, and Carol moved so that she would be hidden from anyone entering the engine room. There was something still living on the ship.

‘It’s pointless to hide,’ a smooth voice said from near the doorway. ‘I already know you’re here. If you’re looking for parts to scavenge, you’ll have to look elsewhere.’

Carol said nothing, but caught sight of a gaunt looking man stepping closer to her hiding spot, his feet not making a sound on the grimy floor. His clothing gave him away as Asgardian, though Carol couldn’t fathom what an Asgardian might be doing so far from their empire in such a run down ship.

‘Not a scavenger,’ she said, stepping out with her hands raised placatingly. ‘I was in the area and saw your ship. I thought it was abandoned, and I wanted to know what had happened.’

‘Ah,’ the man sneered, ‘You expect me to believe that you’re some sort of do-gooder, here to _help’_

She snorted. She honestly, truly tried to hold it in, but she couldn’t help letting it escape anyway. For the first time in the conversation, she saw the man produce an expression that wasn’t disdain. He looked, if anything, surprised. He covered it well, with a raised eyebrow, but she was pretty sure of what she’d seen.

‘Nah, I’m just really really nosy,’ she said with as bright a grin as she could muster, ‘And, honestly, I’ve never seen a TI make in the wild and I really wanted to see what it looked like in the engine. They inspired so many different ships, but documentation about how they themselves were put together is frustratingly rare and I have _so_ many questions!’ She threw her hands out in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. She hoped he believed her. It was the truth, but she _had_ also been trying to do some good if, by some miracle, someone had survived. It didn’t look like he was interested in hearing that though.

‘Well, you’ve looked your fill,’ he said, sneering once again. There was something strange about how he spoke, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. ‘You may leave now.’

Carol said nothing for a moment, making sure to maintain eye contact so that he could see exactly how stupid she thought he was.

‘Your engine is fucked,’ she said. He was dead in the water, and he wanted her to _leave_. ‘Your engine is so very fucked that I don’t think it can be fixed without ripping the whole thing apart and building it all over again.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ the man snapped.

_There it is_ , she thought. His voice didn’t quite match the movement of his lips, and there was a flicker of translucence in his fingertips. That’s what had been odd about him.

‘Then you know you’re going to die here, without help,’ she said, tilting her head.

‘And I suppose you’re willing to help me out of the goodness of your heart?’ he snarled.

‘Nope!’ Carol replied, smiling. He took a step back, brows furrowing. While she was willing to help him, or whoever was pretending to be him, she figured he wouldn’t trust her offering to do it for free. 

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I want to know who you really are, behind the projection, and I want the opportunity to properly investigate the engine of your ship,’ she told him.

There was silence as he sized her up, and Carol felt the weight of it. Whoever this was, they were desperate and out of options.

‘You’re clever, Kree.’ The voice came from directly outside the engine room this time as the image of the man before her faded in a green wisp. This voice was much the same as the one she’d heard from the man, only a little higher in pitch.

The figure that stepped into the room had a similar figure to the man, though more feminine. Their hair looked somewhat unkempt, and there was a wariness in their eyes that Carol could very well understand. The two daggers they held were long, and sharp, and Carol was happy to not have had one stuck in her already.

‘I’m not Kree,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest.

‘Oh? You expect me to believe that’s the symbol of a Ravager you wear on your chest?’

‘I’m not a _fucking_ Kree,’ she spat, ‘They stole me and used me and lied to me and I will wear their fucking symbol under my own colours if I fucking well want to. I hope they’re all appropriately horrified that their little rogue experiment still runs around being mistaken for one of them while helping people instead of causing destruction.’ 

‘Ah, I see. It is spite,’ the smile on their face was a little feral. Carol matched it with one of her own.

‘Some days, spite is all you have left.’

‘Quite. My name is Loki. I believe I could use some of your spiteful help.’

Well, that made for quite the turn. One of Asgard’s… princes? Heirs? A child of Odin lost in the wrong part of the universe, asking her to help out of spite. Carol was pretty sure her life was just going to keep on being weird until the day she died.

* * *

Loki took another moment to assess the strange not-Kree woman whose sole motivations so far appeared to be spite and boundless curiosity. She’d thought her a renegade, likely seen by the Kree as defective for showing any emotion besides complete disdain for all other life forms. Whoever she truly was, she was out of the ordinary.

It pained her to be so reliant on another, especially in her current circumstances, but the ship’s engine truly was beyond repair. Her many magical talents may have allowed her to shift into a shape capable of flight, but even she wasn’t capable of withstanding the freezing vacuum of space. The cold may not kill her, but the oxygen deprivation definitely would.

‘How, exactly did you get here?’ Loki asked, finally sheathing one of her daggers. The other she kept by her side. ‘I saw no ships approaching, and anything small enough to be unnoticed will surely be useless in transporting the both of us.’

The woman tapped something on her communication array, and a glowing mask slid over her face. It seemed that, before the spite, she’d been important enough that the Kree had equipped her with some of their best tech. Loki still wasn’t entirely sure she could trust her, but at least survival was looking to be increasingly likely.

‘I can fly as well. Don’t ask, I don’t really know how. It was an accident,’ she said, grinning.

Loki thought it was probably best to leave the patent absurdity of that statement alone for now. She could deal with that later.

‘And where, exactly, are you planning to take me?’ she asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘Well, I’m guessing any of the Asgardian territories are gonna be a no-go,’ she said. Loki’s heart stopped for a split second at the mere thought. ‘Thought so. Anyway, the only other place I can think of that’s got the kind of defences I feel comfortable with that _aren’t_ either owned by or allied with either of the powers we’re trying to avoid, would be Terra. Most people think it’s too backwater to bother with, but they can handle their shit there.’

Loki wasn’t sure whether she wanted to scream or cry. Of all the planets in existence, this renegade not-Kree just _had_ to think of Terra. Earth was almost as bad as Asgard. Last Loki had heard, Thor was still there gallivanting around with his little mortal ‘friends’. It was a fair sized planet, she supposed, and crawling with mortals. Thor didn’t have any of the magical awareness necessary to recognise her if she was in the next room, never mind on the other side of a planet. Perhaps she could find somewhere to live quietly and never see him at all. Irritatingly, the Not-Kree was correct. Terra most likely _was_ the safest place for both of them at the moment. It certainly wasn’t a place her father would think to look for her.

‘Very well,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We may go to Terra.’

The woman grinned, and Loki was made to wonder how she’d ever thought this woman was Kree.

‘Awesome, glad you’re on board,’ she said. ‘Let’s get planetside and switch out this hunk of junk for something that’s _actually_ spaceworthy. Once we hit Terra, we can crash with my friend Nick. He’s pretty cool about weird shit.’

Her sudden burst of energy was hard to follow, but Loki painted a smile on her face in response. She hoped it came across as more _reluctant gratefulness_ than _confusion and annoyance_. The latter would only invite questions she had no intention of answering.

‘My name’s Carol, by the way,’ the woman said, sticking her hand out for Loki to shake.

Loki grasped her hand and was immediately surprised by just how warm it was. She kind of wanted to just cling to it for a little while. ‘It’s lovely to make your acquaintance,’ she said, forcing herself to let go.

‘You’re freezing!’ Carol gasped. ‘I assume you’re using magic to sustain your core, but that’s not sustainable. We need to get you warmed up before we head planetside. Once I’m outside, I won’t have any way of knowing if you get too cold. We’re not far from Petros and they’ve got decent shipyards so if we get you warm enough to survive at least half a day, you should be fine.’

‘What do you suggest?’ Loki asked, wondering how it was that the woman hadn’t felt the cold until now. Even Loki had felt it, though she was sure her Jötunn blood would keep her from truly freezing.

‘We should go somewhere a little more comfortable than the engine room,’ Carol said, striding out of the room and into the hallway. ‘I have an idea that should work. Some place with a bed would be best; that way you can lay down.’

Loki snorted as she followed Carol into the hall. ‘If it’s a bed you want, you’re going the wrong way,’ she said. ‘And it’s rather bold of you to assume such things.’

Carol turned on her heel to face Loki again, her face a burning red, though Loki thought that perhaps the embarrassment stemmed more from her error in direction than from the innuendo.

‘Right, lead the way,’ Carol said, waving Loki ahead. ‘Stupid ship is laid out in the most ridiculous way possible, but sure, make fun of me for not being able to find the berths.’

Loki led the way through the twisting passageways. She’d never admit it where Carol could hear her, but the layout of the ship _was_ rather baffling. It had taken her a couple of days to find the berths originally. They weren’t anything impressive, but they had flat, non-metallic surfaces to lie on and a few blankets that she’d brought with her when she left. It was certainly better than sleeping in the pilot’s chair had been. 

Loki gestured to the room, ‘This is it. Now what?’ She didn’t really think Carol had been suggesting they have sex for warmth. Apart from the fact that it wouldn’t really generate anywhere near enough heat, it wasn’t the most romantic of settings.

Carol took a couple of steps back, gave a full body shiver and then there was a tiger standing in front of Loki. She stared. Carol was a shifter. That meant that Carol was from one of the Nine Realms and, given her form, was most likely Terran. The whole thing raised far more questions than it provided answers. Loki stumbled forward as Carol nudged her in the back of the knees. She allowed herself to be herded over to the bed to lie down.

‘I suppose that’s one way of doing things,’ she said.

Carol stretched out beside her, pressing along her side with her warm, furry bulk. It felt surprisingly pleasant, and Loki felt herself beginning to drift off in spite of herself.


End file.
